Keeping it in the family

Tags

Depression, Expression, Family, Father, Feelings, Lies, Mother, PTSD, Repression, Secrets

• Being assaulted was not my first episode of depression, although it was the first time I’ve dealt with PTSD.
• Previously I’d thought that most of the rage and repression within my blood and my genes came from my mother’s side of the family, but its really both sides.
• I grew up with a mother who suffers from depression and possibly even PTSD.
• I grew up with a mother who isn’t comfortable in her own skin, who has always been afraid of herself and others.
• I grew up with a mother who doesn’t want to let go of the trauma she went through, not ever, and we’ve had to live with the result of that.
• I grew up with an emotionally distant father who is himself, a towering inferno of repression. Possibly much moreso than my mother.
• I grew up in a family where secrets and lies were considered to be better than the truth, easier to deal with.
• I grew up in a family where both parents had issues with their own parents.
• I grew up in a family that wasn’t very social. My parents have never had alot of friends and neither have my sister or myself.
• I am not the person my parents expect, even when they think they have a hold on who I am. This upsets them no doubt.

I was always told as a young child that I was over-sensitive, over-emotional, that I lived in a fantasy land. I know now that wasn’t true. I am just a sensitive, emotional person in touch with the bigger picture of this world, beyond what we perceive with our eyes.

We don’t have to be a product of our past, although that’s what we have to work with. Its the materials we’re given. People forget to tell us we can swap materials out along the way, but we can.

The main reason for the tension between myself and my parents? I want to talk about things that make them shiver and shake. They wish to talk about the garden, the grandchildren, what to buy next. Or in extremes, gloss over the surface of the scary issues and consider the topic covered.

They find me intense, morose. They wish to have the younger version of me back, the one who was always acting and performing. Being a large personality, sparkling and shining. But things are now stripped back, simplified and I don’t have a desire to put on that costume any longer.

I want to work and work, and dive into the depths, unlocking all the doors, liberating myself from my perceived constraints.

In a household of “sweep it under the carpet” people, I am the anomaly. I am shouting it from the rooftops, even if no one is listening. I am expressing every last inch of what I feel, because I know no other way.

~Svasti